Whenever
a student gets within a few feet, Anastasia Bodnar waves and smiles,
trying to make a good first impression before eyes drift down to a word
many Americans rank down there with "socialist."

Bodnar is the happy face of atheism at Iowa State University.
Once a week at this booth at a campus community center, the PhD student
who spends most of her time researching the nutritional traits of corn
takes questions and occasional abuse while trying to raise the profile
of religious skepticism.

"A
lot of people on campus either don't know we exist or are afraid of us
or hate us," says Bodnar, president of the ISU Atheist and Agnostic
Society. "People assume we're rabble-rousing, when we're one of the
gentlest groups on campus."

As the stigma of
atheism has diminished, campus atheists and agnostics are coming out of
the closet, fueling a sharp rise in the number of clubs like the
10-year-old group at Iowa State.

Campus affiliates of the Secular Student Alliance, a sort of Godless Campus Crusade for Christ,
have multiplied from 80 in 2007 to 100 in 2008 and 174 this fall,
providing the atheist movement new training grounds for future leaders.
In another sign of growing acceptance, at least three universities,
including Harvard, now have humanist chaplains meeting the needs of the not-so-spiritual.

I certainly don't associate atheism with socialism. I associate religion with socialism because of its collectivist mindset. In fact, don't the mormons use the beehive as kind of a symbol of their religion? Neither religion or statism really promote individualism and freedom and they both center around blind faith in and worship of some central figure like jesus or obama.

Comment by Lola Flores

Entered on: 11/22/2009 12:29:00 PM

As well they should. Someone's got to counter-act the rampant madness of the Religious Right, those whackjobs who are pro-lifers for war and warmongers for peace. It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it. This country and the nutjobs that polute it need to be brought back to their senses before it's too late and we're sent back to The Dark Ages.